Uzswlu english philology faculty english Theoretical disciplines department

3. Self Assessment 

Let’s segue into the next obvious extension of student-centric teaching: self assessment. 

If you’re teaching a well-rounded course that incorporates comprehension, speaking, 

tasks and grammar, then using self-assessment will be a breeze because your curriculum 

already has enough built-in assessment material. You won’t even need to come up with a 

special test or activity. 

---

Here are some benefits of self-assessment: 

• 

Showing vs. telling. Students fully understand what they need to improve upon 

and why because the assessment isn’t coming from a teacher. 

• 

Motivation. 

Students will be more invested because

, as the graders, they’ll know 

exactly the level they’re expected to achieve. There won’t be any surprises or 

ambiguity. 

• 

Fairness. Students like having a say in their final score because they trust that it 

will be fair. 

This University of Alicante article

 elaborates on how this method 

prevents resentment by creating an atmosphere where grading disagreements 

are handled openly and directly. 

It’s smart to pair student-designed tests with self-assessed grading because students 

know the criteria. If you design the test, though, then make sure the requirements are 

clear beforehand. 

Just because they’re self-assessed doesn’t mean the test has to be anything fancy. It can 

be the typical format: a listening exercise with questions, a spoken presentation, an essay 

and a written portion, etc. 

When grading the essay and spoken portion, ask the students to give themselves an 

overall grade using a rubric you provide them. The rubric will ask students to assess 

different aspects individually, for example: fluency, vocabulary, spelling and clarity. You 

can fill out the same rubric simultaneously. Their final grade would be the average of the 

two scores 

4. Task-based 

We mentioned the benefits of showing students what they need to improve upon versus 

telling them. 

Task-based assessments

 take this to a whole new level. 

Use task-based assessments

 when you want to test a student’s speaking and 

comprehension. This is usually conducted in pairs or with the teacher participating, but 

try to avoid the latter so that all of your attention can be focused on assessing. 

Diagnostic tests, for example, are often presented in straightforward, brief formats that 

include sections like fill-in-the-blank, correctly conjugate underlined words in a text, 

etc. Task-based assessments, on the other hand, can be broader. 

Instead of having a student answer questions that use new political vocabulary, have 

them give a 15-minute presentation as if they were speaking to a UN delegation and had 

to argue for or against euthanasia or some other important topic. 

 

 

 

 

---